Running for Ruby

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Well hello again! It's good to be back. As you may have noticed, I took a break from writing for about a year, but I'm back to finish the project. The Lord brought a lot of things across my path last year that required my full attention, and though I missed blogging and running, I knew that at such a point in my life, it had to take a back burner. Thank you so much for being patient. I'm back in action, ready for a new season of writing and activism for the glory of my loving, merciful Savior!

Running for Ruby is going to take a bit of a different spin. I am as passionate as ending the sex trade as ever, but I also want to so more than just ask for donations. I am asking the Lord to reveal another way to help. I have a few ideas, and I would love for you to join in with me! I will still continue to post stories of victims of human trafficking for the sake of education and prayer. I will also include, hopefully, interviews with some people on the front lines of this issue. Finally (and this is what I am most eager for!) I am going to highlight fair trade products in an attempt to make a sort of shopping guide, so that when you purchase every day necessities, you can help victims of human trafficking at the same time! I mean, we need the stuff anyways, so why not help people when we buy it?! The Lord has laid it on my heart to adopt a new lifestyle, in which I buy everything certified fair trade from organizations and one-for-one companies. I'd love for you to try it with me! I'll still leave the World Vision link up if you'd like to donate there (I never did reach my fundraising goal), but fair trade shopping is another great way you can donate while receiving the products you need at the same time.

This post is two-fold; it's the end of one season and the beginning of another, and I'm so thankful you're here for the transition. I finished my project with a run of half-marathon distance Thanksgiving morning of 2011. For the first time in my life, I think I truly grasped the meaning of Thanksgiving day. This final post is a tribute to a woman who knows the depths of thanksgiving in her heart more deeply than most. I've known her story my whole life, and I am so thankful that I know the man who saved her. This one is for him. Thanks for reading, and may the Lord make himself known to you.

Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

“I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”

“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

Many Samaritans Believe

Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers.

They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

John 4

13.1 miles for the Woman at the Well
365 miles for Jesus Christ, for his kingdom and his glory

RubySandraBerchewkanManiSopheaJannaSyowaiKaStephanieAlexMaiKhamtaAdazeJayatiBoloztuyaPrettygirlTheresaEsperanzaXuanGeetaDebbieG.Q., N.H., and S.O.AnuradhaVeronicaMartinaShaunaRosaJayceeCharlotte AwinoKikka CerpaJanaLannieSamiraMariSarahMao MaoKeishaBrittanyGabriellaAkemiOlgaAlissaKarinaMairaAmitaJosephineSabineMyleeSamanthaKurshidaColegialaBhartiIrinaNearyJaneYeu and DepAshaShauna
the Woman at the Well

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Nice home. Nice parents. Nice friends. A safe neighborhood. Shauna is the last person I'd expect to see on the international sex market, yet at $300,000, she was one her way to become one of Texas' most desired prostitutes by no fault of her own. The title of this article was "Sinister Sleepover." If you ask me, "sinister" is a euphemism.

Shauna's story...

Internal Trafficking often means little distance travelled and Sexual Assault to break down resistance may take place only blocks away from home.Shauna Newell was fortunate when she was abducted two years ago. Thanks to her mother and Klaas’ organization, which organized a search for her, she was rescued after three days. She’s gone public to warn other girls about how easy it is to be kidnapped and trafficked.

A typical 16-year-old in a middle-class home in suburban Pensacola, Fla., Newell’s nightmare began innocently enough: A new friend she had met in high school asked her to come to her home for a sleepover.

Newell’s mother, Lisa Brant, didn’t like the idea, but after weeks of lobbying by her daughter, Brant met with the girl and the man she said was her father to make sure her daughter would be safe.

But the girl’s “father” was really a convicted felon, and the girl, who had a record of prostitution in Texas, was an accomplice in the abduction. “Her dad took us to this house and said he'd be right back and he left us there,” Newell recounted in a taped interview. “And I asked for some water because I was thirsty. And I drank the water and I blacked out.”

The water had been laced with a drug. When she woke up, Newell was groggy and couldn’t move.

“My legs were being held down, and the guy that was raping me was holding my hands back,” she said in a quiet voice. “I kept screaming, ‘Stop, please don't do this. Leave me alone.’ But I was so weak, I couldn't fight them off. Like I was, I was so really out of it. And I blacked out a few times and I kept coming back to. And I was still being raped every time I woke up.”

Left alone for a moment, Newell managed to call her mother.

“My cell phone rang. And all I heard was, ‘Mommy, help me,’ ” Brant said. “And the phone went dead. And I freaked!”Lisa Brant, whose daughter, Shauna Newell, was abducted and gang-raped.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------She called police, but they told her that Newell had probably run away from home, and they wouldn’t be able to treat it as a missing-person case until 72 hours had elapsed.

A stroke of luck
With law enforcement unwilling to act, Brant and Newell’s siblings started their own search. They were fortunate in that Brad Dennis, an investigator for KlaasKids, was based in the area because the Florida Panhandle is an epicenter of human trafficking.

By sheer luck, one search party stopped at a convenience store for something to drink, and Newell’s 14-year-old brother spotted his sister in the back seat of another car that had stopped at the same store. She was rescued, but her abductors managed to flee.

After three days of being raped and beaten and drugged, Newell was dirty, bloody, bruised and barely alive. She was airlifted to a hospital and had to be resuscitated twice. In addition to her serious injuries, she had been infected with an STD.

Newell said that her captor told her she had been sold on the Internet for $300,000 to a man in Texas. Fortunately, she was rescued before delivery could be made. During Newell’s ordeal in Florida, her captor took money from a number of men who raped her. When she screamed, he held a gun to her head and threatened to blow her brains out.
Afraid for her life, Newell later moved in with her boyfriend and now has a child of her own. Her family continues to lobby for national legislation that will provide aid for Americans forced into the sex trade similar to aid that is provided for girls and boys who are brought into the country and forced into prostitution.

Vieira asked Lisa Brant what advice she has for other girls.

“Listen to your parents. Just don’t stop believing. Be strong,” she said. “Follow what your parents say fully, fully. There are people out there who will help you. Speak up. Everybody needs to speak up. Girls that have gone through this, they’re scared."

Saturday, February 18, 2012

"The gods have forgotten you. This is your fate," the girl said sadly. Frightened, exhausted and hungry, Asha surrendered.

Last week, I watched the movie Courageous. If you haven't seen it, man, you have to! (MOVIE SPOILER WARNING.) This movie is a story of God's beautiful grace to a family after they lose their nine year old daughter Emily in a car accident. We watch Emily's father, mother, and brother journey through the grief and learn to trust and honor God in the process. I cried from beginning to end.

One scene that really broke me was one of Emily's mother the day after the accident. She laid in Emily's bed, sobbing, begging of her husband, "Make sense of this for me; make sense of this!" The man sat down shell shocked, while their son sat one room over drowning out reality with a video game.

Losing a child, a nine year old little girl, has to be one of the most devistating happenings we could ever imagine. We do everything to keep children safe. Can't you just hear your own parents saying, "Buckle that seatbelt," "Hold my hand," "Let me cut that for you," "Don't touch that," "Don't talk to strangers"... need I continue?

Imagine the overwhelming grief of losing a little girl, a rare but still terrible reality of America today.

But what if you were forced to hand over your own daughter's life to survive? What if you were part of a society of selling off daughters to make it through? What if you not only lost a daughter, but gave her up, not to meet the Lord in heaven, but to perform unspeakable, disgusting acts every single day for the rest of her life?

Asha was nine years old, and such was the reality for her family.

She should have been playing with dolls. Instead, the bright-eyed little girl was sold by her father and became a "doll" in a Mumbai brothel. Asha was only nine when her father sold her to a procurer. She came from a very poor family. Seven children had been born to Asha's parents. They certainly could not afford a girl.
The bright-eyed little girl had no idea what was going on or how her life was about to change forever. She only knew that the lady named Kala had told her she was going on a trip to a very special place, that she would have new clothes, and that she would be working for a nice family who lived in a big house. The lady asked Asha if she was willing to work hard. Asha nodded. "Will you do anything that is asked of you?" Asha said she would try. Asha wanted her family to be proud of her.
The adventure began at the bus station in Katmandu. Asha had never ridden a bus before. Asha wondered how many other girls would be fortunate enough to go to a big city like Mumbai. Perhaps this was what her father meant when he talked about good karma. She couldn't wait to say her pujas (daily prayers), as her father and mother had taught her to give thanks for such good fortune. Asha looked excitedly out the window as the Nepali hills rolled by. The bus trip lasted much longer than she expected - 14 hours just to get to the border town of Nepalgunj.
Once there, they walked across the border where they boarded another bus for the trip to Delhi. Asha asked Kala if they were almost there. Kala told her that Mumbai was very far away and they wouldn't be there for several days. After what seemed like forever, Asha asked again. Kala glowered at the little girl. Asha decided that perhaps she should not ask such questions.
The stifling heat and the exhaust fumes made Asha sick to her stomach. She wondered if Mumbai would be like this. All that day the bus bumped and swayed over the dusty roads of North India. Asha began to realize that wherever Mumbai was, it was a long way from home. She wondered if her parents would come to see her.
Finally, after three days and hundreds of nameless Indian villages, the driver announced the good news - they were in Mumbai. Asha became excited. What will the family be like? What about their big house? When Asha and Kala climbed down from the bus there was no one to meet them. Asha was confused. She looked around. Kala grabbed her hand and nearly jerked her off her feet. "Come, child!"
They walked quickly through the busy station, past the beggars who swarmed the sidewalk outside, and to the taxi stand. Asha had never been in a car. Kala spoke crisply to the driver. "Falkland Road." This must be a very special place, she thought for the driver instantly nodded his head in recognition. It was night when the taxi wound its way through Mumbai's crowded streets, but unlike Nepal, it wasn't dark. Everywhere she looked, Asha saw lights, lots of lights with strange markings. Asha did not know the meaning of the strange markings. She had never been to school.
After an hour's drive, the taxi turned onto what seemed to be the busiest street of all. The taxi stopped. Kala pulled her arm again. "This is where we get out," the woman said crossly. This was a strange place. "Where's the pretty house?" Asha asked shyly. "Quiet!" Kala barked. "This is your new home."
Women and girls lounged in the doorway. Their faces were painted in ways Asha had never seen. Asha stopped and stared. Kala roughly pulled the little girl through the door. They walked down a series of long, poorly lit corridors. Asha could feel the wet garbage under her bare feet, oozing between her toes. There was heaviness in the air. This did not seem like a happy place.
Suddenly, a woman was standing in front of them. "Here she is," Kala said tersely, "That'll be 40,000 rupees" (about $100 U.S.). The woman took Asha to a little room. "This is where you'll stay," the woman declared without emotion as she pushed the child through the door. Asha shivered when she heard the dead bolt slam into place. Something seemed very wrong. Asha felt frightened - and alone. She prayed to the family gods. It didn't seem to help. Asha went to sleep wondering what kind of place she had come to. When she woke up, she couldn't tell whether it was day or night because her room had no windows.
After a long while, the woman returned. She sat down on the bed and opened a little bag. She started putting make-up on Asha's face. Asha winced. A few minutes later the woman came back with a man. The woman told Asha what to do. Asha did not want to do such things. The woman slapped her. Asha cried. The woman slapped her again. "No! No! I will not do such things." The woman cursed Asha in Nepali and then left.
A few minutes later, she returned with another man. His lip curled in a mocking snarl. She had never seen such a look. "So, you don't want to work, eh?" He pulled off his belt and began to beat Asha. He beat her until the pain filled her body. Then he left. Asha curled up on her cot and whimpered softly.
Later that day the woman came back. "Ready to work, little doll?" Asha cried and pleaded with her. "Please don't make me do those things." The man with the belt came back. Three times that day he beat her. When the time came to eat, they brought nothing to Asha. Still the little girl resisted. The torture lasted for days. Without light, Asha lost track of time. Without food she grew weak.
One of the other girls told Asha it was useless to resist. She told Asha of another girl who had been put in a room with a cobra until she changed her mind about doing as she was told. It didn't take long, the girl reported. "The gods have forgotten you. This is your fate," the girl said sadly. Frightened, exhausted and hungry, Asha surrendered.
In those first days, Asha often cried herself to sleep, wishing she was back in her village, homesick for her mother. She hated life in the brothel, hated what she saw, hated what she did. She hated what happened to the other girls - especially the sick ones. But the tears grew less and less, and Asha became accustomed to her new life.
Seven years passed. Seven years without seeing her mother or brothers. Seven years in what she and the other girls called "that place." Seven years watching girls become sick with the "Bombay Disease." Seven years of watching them turned out on the streets to die. Asha dreamed of buying her freedom and going home to Nepal, but she knew there was little hope of that.
By her sixteenth birthday, Asha had forgotten what hope was. Until she met a man named Devaraj. Devaraj was different than the other men she had known. She met him at a small church near Falkland Road. There he taught messages of hope that lifted her spirits. He talked of freedom. She visited there as often as she could. She longed more than ever to be free from Falkland Road, but she still lacked the money to pay the "investment" the brothel owner had made in her.
One night after service, Devaraj told Asha she could leave the district. Asha could hardly believe what she was hearing. "How is this possible?" Asha asked. Devaraj explained that some "friends" had given a gift to purchase her freedom. In a few days, Asha left the brothel that had been her home since she was a young girl and moved into a "Home of Hope." Now she is learning how to live. She is learning a new trade. And thanks to people who care, Asha's life is no longer surrounded by pain and disappointment. It is full of hope and optimism for the future.source of Asha's story.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Please note: all the names are changed in this story for security. Friends and family members who know names, please do not share them. Thank you.

I came down the stairs and awkwardly found a seat at the kitchen table. It was one of those family Christmas parties at my aunt and uncle's house... the kind where you get only 3 hours to make conversation with the people that you only see once a year. On my dad's side of the family, I have a ton of cousins, including 13 cross-culturally adopted cousins all from the same family. I usually spend the first 20 minutes of the Christmas party trying to pick out who is who, and the family is always growing, so when I saw two new Asian girls in the kitchen, I wasn't surprised at all. I opened my ears to their conversation to try to grab their names.
"You don't have to do that!" My Aunt Thabitha was doing all she could to wrestle the dirty dishes from the girls's hands, but they were adamant on washing them.
"Yes we do! We have to help!" one replied.
"They never stop cleaining," my cousin June chimed in. "And they always want to do our nails!"
"Your mom does everything for us! We have to help," the other girl replied.

My Aunt Elle, mother of the 13, slid down at the table next to my mom and I. She began whispering, and the expression on my mom's face subtly grew into complete shock. Noticing my bewilderment at the new additions to our family, Aunt Elle then turned to me, and filled me in on what was going on.

These two girls were Yeu and Dep and they were Vietnamese. They used to work in the nail salon my Aunt Elle frequented. Having travelled to Vietnam to adopt some of my cousins, my aunt knew a bit of the language, and got to know the two girls.

One day, they decided to take a leap of faith and trust my Aunt Elle with information that could have ended their lives. In Vietnam, they were offered great opportunity in America: good jobs, education, medical care, and every opportunity they would want, so they followed a man onto an airplane, trusting him with all of their paperwork. When they arrived in America, it was all a plot. They were enslaved, forced to work long hours in the nail salon, then clean the entire house. They were taken advantage of in many other ways.

Aunt Elle was the right person to trust. After several phone calls to the FBI, information-gathering manicures, and night raids to the York home, Yeu and Dep were now in my Aunt's kitchen. Human trafficking was so close, that I literally stumbled upon it.

So much for the land of the free...

Yeu and Dep's story:

Lynda Phan essentially enslaved two young women from Vietnam to work in her West Manchester Township nail salons for three years.
Three years of working long hours, often seven days a week, for no pay -- and under emotionally demoralizing circumstances as the former Fairview Township salon owner reportedly demeaned the women she greedily exploited.
On Thursday, she was sentenced in federal court on guilty pleas to human trafficking and other charges.
Her sentence?
Three months in jail.
Three months for three years of forced labor.
It just doesn't add up.
A co-defendant in the case got off even easier: Duc Cao Nguyen must serve one year of probation.
Shouldn't the jail time for engaging in modern American slavery be at least equal to the amount of time the victims suffered?
Three years? Maybe six if you count each case separately and run the sentences consecutively?
Many people who commit nonviolent crimes get more time in jail than Lynda Phan will get for creating an emotional and mental prison for two young women who came to America -- granted, illegally -- to help their families by sending home money.
Yes, she also must serve house arrest for 270 days, bringing her loss of freedom closer to a year.
Yes, she must pay restitution to the victims.
Yes, she lost her home and other possessions.
Still, three months in jail followed by nine months of hanging around wherever she's living now doesn't seem like much retribution -- or deterrent to others who might consider exploiting young immigrants with American dreams and desperate families in their homelands.
At least these two young victims -- named A.V. and T.V. in court documents -- weren't forced to be sex slaves, as authorities have alleged in some other local human trafficking cases.
But the ordeal has left emotional scars for T.V., who said in court through a translator that "you treated me worse and worse" and "I was punished in many different ways... . You broke my heart and my spirit was broken little by little."
T.V. graciously forgave Ms. Phan, saying that "nothing good comes from hating a person or treating them harshly."
That's a nice sentiment -- and probably a healthy approach to life.
But with all due respect, true justice in this case demands that Ms. Phan be treated more "harshly."

Facts about the nail salon case:
Lynda Phan, Duc Cao Nguyen and Justin Phan were charged with conspiracy to commit forced labor trafficking, forced labor and marriage fraud for keeping two young Vietnamese nationals in a Fairview Township home and forcing them to work at an area nail salon under threat of being turned over to immigration services.
The result: All three pleaded guilty in October. Lynda Phan and Nguyen were sentenced Thursday in federal court -- Phan to 90 days in jail, 270 days house arrest and one year probation and Nguyen to one year of probation. Lynda Phan has paid $250,000 of $300,000 in court-ordered restitution. Justin Phan is scheduled for sentencing next month, and his plea agreement calls for one year of supervised probation.

Also of interest:
From York Daily Record/Sunday News files: In 2006, Immigration and Customs Enforcement uncovered a network of brothels along the East Coast, including two in York County, where women were kept as sex slaves. The network smuggled South Korean women into the U.S. and forced them to work in the parlors to pay off their transportation debts. The women were told that, if they left the business before paying off their debts, they would be turned over to police or immigration authorities, federal complaints stated.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

I was watching one of those state trooper TV shows the other day.In the episode, a lady had intrusively parked her trailer on another lady's land in eastern Montana.The landowner called the police to get her off.While the police were on the way, the landowner discovered that there was another lady in the trailer- a young, Asian woman, and together, the two women were handing out flyers for "MASSAGES- 100% HOT YOUNG ASIAN WOMEN!"When the officer arrived, he interviewed the young Asian."I don't know about this massage.I came from New York to be a housecleaner.She promises me $30,000 per month for cleaning... I mean $3,000."As she spits out excuses, the officer stares at her dumbfounded, holding a flyer with her erotic picture front and center. The woman had paperwork... a passport, nonetheless.She was clearly a US citizen and not a victim of the international sex trade, yet here she was, willingly putting herself in the center of human trafficking- to be used and passed, used and passed.The trooper asked a lot of questions to get the details of the case, but then he asked one question that I'm pretty sure we were all asking: Why?

Jane was a lot like this lady.She says she doesn't remember much about her childhood of drug-feuled abuse and molestation, occuring in both her home and the day care she attended on a daily basis.At age 14, she found herself in the hands of Jay, a family friend who promised her a better life in Oregon, but ended up forcing Jane into prostitution.Alone, empty, and unloved, Jane grew more and more depressed.She knew she was being abused, but the attention from Jay felt good.How can something so wrong and sick feel so much like a solution?“I trusted him even after all this stuff. After he abused me, I still thought it was love — I thought that this is how it was supposed to be. … Most of our arguments were about money,” she said, adding that she had sex with six men a day, sometimes eight or nine. “I was bringing him $600 a day, but he wanted more.”Just like this Asian lady, she could have gotten out.She could have found a job.But something was holding her back, tying her down to the prostitution beast.

Ain't that how it goes, though?We have these needs, so deep that we would do anything to fill them.The need to be loved.The need to be respected and come out on top.The need to lose weight and feel beautiful.The need to build muscle feel strong. The need for a father, or a mother, or a grande french vanilla chai with extra foam and a drizzle of caramel.If only he would notice me!If only I had the courage to talk to her!If only I hadn't done it.If only I didn't have all these needs.Paralyzed and defeated, we dig ourselves into a hole too big to climb out of, only increasing our eternally growing lists of "If only, if only"s.

Author Kary Overbrunner calls these holes our "given names"- the names that the world gives us, and that we give ourselves. Names like "promiscuous," "unloved," "lazy," "awkward.”We all have them, and they keep returning us to that place we hate to be, to our Jay.

What is immobilizing you?I challenge you this week to make a list of your given names.For a little guidance, if you like, check out Overbrunner’s website and try step one of the Secret Name Test.

If you thought this project was about freedom for sex trade victims, you were only partially right.This blog is about freedom for everyone.This is not only about awareness of the sex trade, it’s awareness that we, the church, can do so much more!But just like the world, just like Asian prostitutes, just like Jane… we’re stuck. So in these last few entries, lace up your bootstraps because we’re going to do some serious soul searching.

I very rarely get to say this, so I'm really thrilled to inform you that Jane's story does have a happy ending :) She was rescued by the police and taken in by the Children of the Night center. She earned her GED and is now attending college and "getting help from people who actually care about me."

I was watching one of those state trooper TV shows the other day. In the episode, a lady had intrusively parked her trailer on another lady's land in eastern Montana. The landowner called the police to get her off. While the police were on the way, the landowner discovered that there was another lady in the trailer- a young, Asian woman, and together, the two women were handing out flyers for "MASSAGES- 100% HOT YOUNG ASIAN WOMEN!" When the officer arrived, he interviewed the young Asian. "I don't know about this massage. I came from New York to be a housecleaner. She promises me $30,000 per month for cleaning... I mean $3,000." As she spits out excuses, the officer stares at her dumbfounded, holding a flyer with her erotic picture front and center. The woman had paperwork... a passport, nonetheless. She was clearly a US citizen and not a victim of the international sex trade, yet here she was, willingly putting herself in the center of human trafficking- to be used and passed, used and passed. The trooper asked a lot of questions to get the details of the case, but then he asked one question that I'm pretty sure we were all asking: Why?
Jane was a lot like this lady. She says she doesn't remember much about her childhood of drug-feuled abuse and molestation, occuring in both her home and the day care she attended on a daily basis. At age 14, she found herself in the hands of Jay, a family friend who promised her a better life in Oregon, but ended up forcing Jane into prostitution. Alone, empty, and unloved, Jane grew more and more depressed. She knew she was being abused, but the attention from Jay felt good. How can something so wrong and sick feel so much like a solution? “I trusted him even after all this stuff. After he abused me, I still thought it was love — I thought that this is how it was supposed to be. … Most of our arguments were about money,” she said, adding that she had sex with six men a day, sometimes eight or nine. “I was bringing him $600 a day, but he wanted more.” Just like this Asian lady, she could have gotten out. She could have found a job. But something was holding her back, tying her down to the prostitution beast.

Ain't that how it goes, though? We have these needs, so deep that we would do anything to fill them. The need to be loved. The need to be respected and come out on top. The need to lose weight and feel beautiful. The need to build muscle feel strong. The need for a father, or a mother, or a grande french vanilla chai with extra foam and a drizzle of caramel. If only he would notice me! If only I had the courage to talk to her! If only I hadn't done it. If only I didn't have all these needs. Paralyzed and defeated, we dig ourselves into a hole too big to climb out of, only increasing our eternally growing lists of "If only, if only"s.

Author Kary Overbrunner calls these holes our "given names"- the names that the world gives us, and that we give ourselves. Names like "prostitute,"